


The Underdog

by cattajonze



Category: The Monkees (Band), The Monkees (TV)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Body Dysphoria, Emotional Baggage, Families of Choice, If I missed a trigger tag please let me know and I will add it, It's not gory but there are injuries, Male Friendship, Other, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:35:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 19,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25739677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cattajonze/pseuds/cattajonze
Summary: Davy's been kidnapped dozens of times, but Mike knows this time is different. As he struggles to understand what Davy experienced, Mike reflects on his own recovery from a traumatic past.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

The emergency room had been quiet all night, not unusual for a Sunday in Thousand Oaks. Dr. Jenny Waters had just finished assuaging the fears of a young mother whose son had a rash, but no fever, and was heading to the physician’s break room when an ambulance announced its arrival. 

First through the door was a young police officer who looked vaguely familiar to Jenny. She stole a glance at his name tag— Yates— as he flashed his badge.

“Evening, Dr. Waters,” Yates said. “We had a driver call in about this individual lying on the side of highway 101, apparently drunk.”

Jenny nodded. It wasn’t uncommon for the police to bring in an inebriated individual to recover under hospital supervision. Better safe than sorry, they figured. But they normally didn’t arrive in an ambulance.

“Thing is, I don’t think this one’s drunk. Or high,” he added. “He looks like he’s been through hell, though. That’s why I called in the ambulance. You might be looking at some kind of draft dodger or runaway situation here.”

Frowning, Jenny peered at the young man’s filthy appearance. He did look like hell. His stature made him look too young to be a draft dodger, but his long hair made it seem likely. She sighed, knowing that if that were the case, law enforcement would be on his back before he even had a chance to recover.

Yates’s walkie, attached to his belt, mumbled some codes. “I have to check out an accident up the road. We’ll be back to check in on this guy.”

When he was gone, Jenny turned her attention to her new patient, following the gurney as the EMTs rushed into one of the empty ER cubicles. The young man was unconscious and emaciated, his breathing erratic and shallow. She checked his pupils, his arms, and his teeth for signs of drug use and found none. He wasn’t drunk or overdosing, she decided, but he _was_ severely dehydrated.

“Oxygen mask and glucose drip,” she instructed her team as she palpated his body for injuries. His clothes were fashionable but filthy— ripped in a few places, matted with blood in others. She cut open his shirt to listen to his heart and gasped at what she saw: a blue and white strand of love beads.

“Hey,” she flagged a nurse’s attention. “Can you clean him up and shave his face as soon as you get a chance? I think I saw this guy in the missing persons book.”

Jenny’s heart was pounding as she bypassed the breakroom, making a beeline for the office at the end of the hall where the hospital stored reference information. She stood frozen for a moment, scanning bookshelf frantically before spotting the binder of photocopied pages from the regional missing person files. She’d lied to the nurse— she’d never looked at this binder. She’d never had a reason to, or time. 

Now she flipped through the pages, examining each black and white photograph for a second before scanning on. When she found what she was looking for, her heart sank. The photo was blurry from being enlarged and cropped around the young man’s face, but his features were unmistakable. 

Jenny slammed the binder closed and pushed it back onto the shelf, then jogged back down the hall. A nurse was sponging the dirt from the young man’s face, exposing his dark eyebrows, which was all the confirmation Jenny needed to run to the break room and dig her address book out of her bag.

She knew protocol mandated she call the police station, but first she needed to call Mike Nesmith.


	2. Chapter 2

_3 weeks earlier_

It wasn’t the most beautiful day on the beach, but Davy was excited about it. The breeze had a damp chill that reminded him of spring in Manchester. He stood on the back porch, letting the wind whip his hair into his eyes, reminding him how long it was getting— he’d have to ask Mike for a haircut this week.

Inside, Peter was at the piano, tinkering with a new song that he’d said he was writing for Davy to sing. Micky was at the beach a few blocks south, judging a women’s volleyball tournament— or so he claimed. Mike was wherever Mike got to when he was writing lyrics— the park, a cafe, his bedroom— he was very mysterious that way.

Rarely did Davy appreciate the fact that the Pad was located just too far north to see any of the major beach activity. It was rockier than Malibu’s major beaches, and less trafficked by the beach babe crowd. But today the deserted beach appealed to him. 

He said goodbye to Peter, grabbed his jacket from the bandstand, and headed north. He walked for about 30 minutes, losing sight of the Pad as the shoreline took a sharp bend. In the distance, he saw a few figures near the water. They were waving.

He jogged to meet them, their indistinct forms becoming those of three young girls as he approached. Their clothing was strange— it looked more like something his sisters would sew for themselves than anything that was fashionable in LA. Bohemians, he decided. Peter said they rejected capitalism, refused to buy new things, and bartered for what they needed instead. 

“Hey,” he greeted when he was finally within earshot. The girls’ long hair sailed in the wind. Davy wondered what they were doing on this part of the beach— it bordered a high cliff, and the rocks and violently crashing waves made it bad for swimming and surfing, making it an unpopular location for most beachgoers. 

“Hi!” the smallest one called brightly. Her smile showed a mouth of crooked teeth, and her blonde curls shimmered, even in the cloud-dimmed sunlight. Davy guessed she was in her late teens, but she could have been even younger. “I’m Molly.”

The other two seemed more reticent to introduce themselves, but remained where they were, openly staring at him. 

“Do you live here?” The tallest one asked. “What are you doing here?”

Davy shook his head. “No, I live way back there—” he pointed. “I saw you waving and wanted to make sure everything was okay. What are you up to?”

“We’re having a picnic!” Molly replied brightly. Behind the girls, sure enough, was a box full of an odd assortment of food: half a loaf of white bread, a plastic bowl full of berries, a few worm-pocked apples. 

Davy put on his best smile, trying to match her enthusiasm. “That looks fun. Do you come to the beach often?”

“Why are you asking so many questions?” The tall one asked bluntly. She was blonde too, but a dirtier, flatter blonde, and she had dark brown eyes that burned into Davy’s face as she spoke. 

Davy shrugged. He was contemplating whether he should say goodbye and return to the Pad when the middle girl spoke up:

“Johnny’s going to be back soon, are we having this picnic or not?”

Something about the tone of her voice made the hair on Davy’s neck prickle. He decided he needed to stay and meet this Johnny to make sure everything was okay. Molly got to work setting out a piece of bread for each of them, including Davy, and made a show of placing the same amount of berries on each one. The juice bled a little, staining the bread.

“We only have three apples,” Molly said, looking apologetically at Davy. “Here— have mine.”

Davy shook his head, handing it back to her. “That’s okay, you have it. I’ll be fine.”

She smiled, flopping down onto the sand and placing the apple in her lap. “I’m going to save it for Charlie,” she told the other girls, who rolled their eyes.

“That’s stupid,” said the middle girl. “It’s a waste.”

“Johnny said that horse’ll be dead by morning,” the taller one added.

Davy’s ears perked up. “A horse? Is he sick?”

Molly’s eyes were filling with tears. “Johnny says he’s sick. Johnny says we can’t afford to take him to a doctor.”

“I used to be a jockey,” Davy said, his chest swelling with the familiar urge to help. “Maybe I can take a look at him. Do you live nearby?”

All three girls were staring at him intently now, their eyes full of uncertain hope. They began whispering amongst themselves, and Davy couldn’t make out any of the words over the wind. 

Suddenly, a truck roared down the road, skidded to a halt, and a man climbed out. The girls’ postures changed as he approached, appearing to almost march through the sand dunes. They seemed to check themselves, appearing instantly more mature, and subtly distancing themselves from where Davy sat.

“Who’s this?” The man asked immediately. He was tall and lean, but with enough muscles and body hair to give him a rugged appearance. He smiled down at Davy; it was a handsome smile, but it wasn’t a friendly one. 

“I’m Davy,” Davy said. He stood, feeling self-conscious as the man grinned down at him, transparently assessing his stature. “And you are?”

“Johnny,” the man replied. “You’ve been keeping my girls company?”

It took all of Davy’s self control not to wrinkle his nose in distaste at this comment. The girls were surely not the man’s daughters or sisters, and each was far too young to be his wife. 

“Girls, what do you say we get out of here? You know we have plenty of work to do at home.”

They nodded. For the first time, Davy was noticing how they stared at Johnny, each clearly drawn to something about the man— his good looks, or maybe his natural authority. They’re not bohemians, he found himself thinking. This is a cult.

“Where do you live?” Davy blurted in spite of himself. His instincts told him to let them leave, to return to the Pad, and try not to think about them again. But there was something sinister here, and it nagged at him; he couldn’t let the girls just disappear.

Johnny frowned, and opened his mouth to say something, but Molly interrupted: “Davy’s a jockey! He says he might know what’s wrong with Charlie!”

“Is that so?” Johnny said flatly. “You want to come back to our home… and take a look at our sick horse?”

Davy shook his head no, taking a few steps backward.

“Oh please,” Molly cried, clutching the hands of the taller girls on either side of her. “Please, please, Davy.”

“Please, Davy,” Johnny echoed, a mocking note in his voice. “Please come save our horse.”

It all happened so quickly: suddenly Davy was sitting in the truck, crouching in the bed with the taller girls while Molly rode in the cab with Johnny. The vehicle sped down the highway, each jostle a reminder that Davy was traveling farther and farther from home.


	3. Chapter 3

Mike Nesmith knew a thing or two about people leaving. Sometimes people disappeared, and there was nothing you could do but wait around like a chump. Sometimes people didn’t want you, and you had to decide for yourself when it was time to give up. 

It was late— probably past midnight, Mike guessed. He sat in bed with a book on his lap, angled in an uneasy way to keep the pages in the lamplight. He had meant to read one of Micky’s dumb paperbacks and take his mind off real life for awhile. Instead, he’d been reminiscing about his family. His “real” family. The memories weren’t comforting, but at least time had helped him distance himself. Time had slowly compressed those memories into a smaller and smaller space until they rarely resurfaced. That was not the case with Davy.

Davy had been missing for three weeks. One morning, he left for a walk on the beach and never returned. The first night, they assumed he’d met a girl. The second, they figured he’d been kidnapped by another princess and waited for royalty to show up at their door with an invitation to the wedding. The third night, they worried.

They drew up MISSING PERSON posters, papering telephone poles and the bathrooms of local nightclubs. They interrogated all the local bands, and all the local girls, for information about Davy’s whereabouts. Malibu police had made it clear that the disappearance of a long-haired weirdo wasn’t all that unusual and therefore was not their top priority, going so far as to show them 10 page list of missing persons in Orange County— then pasting Davy’s picture into it with a kind of performative formality that suggested they felt they had completed their duty. After a week, with no more information than when they started, the boys despaired.

Peter remained optimistic the longest, insisting that Davy considered the three of them his family, that he’d never leave without saying goodbye. He retrieved the thick notebook from Davy’s dresser where Davy wrote down the names and phone numbers of everyone he’d ever met since moving to America. For over a week, he had systematically called each one, convinced that he’d unearth information. But he’d either begun to lose hope, or he sensed his optimism was becoming a burden, because recently Peter had fallen into the same murky silence as Mike and Micky. 

Micky had been similarly convinced that Davy would never abandon them without a word— but he lacked Peter’s tenacious optimism. If Davy were alive, they would have heard from him by now, Micky had explained through tears after a week with no word. Mike could still vividly recall Micky’s shoulders heaving with grief as he continued: “We’re Davy’s family. He wouldn’t leave us to worry like this,” and felt the own prickly sensation in his chest as he fought with himself about how to respond. 

As the weeks word on, that word, “family,” had begun to lose the meaning Mike had only recently ascribed to it. He could no longer convince himself that they were a family; it was a concept that had once given him comfort and hope and was now something fraught with doubt. Unlike Peter and Micky, Mike knew from experience that people _did_ leave you without warning, and their reasons were often inscrutable and irreversible.

***

Micky had stopped bathing, stopped eating, and— perhaps most alarmingly— stopped speaking. One afternoon Mike had returned home from a long drive to find Micky exactly where he’d been hours before: lying on the sofa, unshowered and unshaven, staring blankly at the television.

Mike had knelt down near Micky’s face and said as gently as he could muster: “Hey, have you eaten anything today?”

“Who cares?” Micky’s voice was raspy from disuse, almost a whisper.

“I do,” Mike had said, tugging on Micky’s rumpled shirt. “You’ve been wearing this for four days. Maybe you’ll feel better if you change.”

“I don’t want to feel better,” Micky had muttered and rolled to face the back of the couch, pulling one of the cushions down over his head to signal that the discussion was over.

Mike had stood up, shaking his head with resignation as a feeling of helplessness welled up inside of him. He couldn’t help Micky. He’d tried, and he’d failed. What would he do now?

He had called Micky’s mother. 

***

It had been the right thing to do. An hour after he’d made the call, Mike was stirring a gigantic pot of spaghetti and Janelle was huddled next to her son on the sofa, brushing fresh tears of his face with her thumb.

“Put on this clean shirt, and come eat some food,” Janelle said. “You boys all look like scarecrows.”

“This is Peter’s shirt,” Micky protested weakly, removing his filthy t-shirt gingerly as though it had become fused to his skin.

“I don’t care,” Janelle said. “Do you care, Peter?”

“No, Mom,” Peter replied, staring at Micky’s bony shoulders.

Janelle was some kind of saint, Mike had thought then, watching her coax Micky off the couch. She’d paid their back rent more than once, and she seemed to possess infinite patience— she’d have to, Mike guessed, to keep Micky alive for 21 years. She dropped by occasionally to restock their icebox with Micky’s favorite casserole, and she had driven them to auditions when the Monkeemobile was being repaired. Last Christmas, when she discovered Mike, Peter, and especially Davy could not afford to travel home, she’d made space for all of them in her house and insisted that they each make long-distance calls to their families. 

Mike often accepted Janelle’s kindness reluctantly, but lately he was truly grateful for her presence. For over a week now, she’d been stopping by almost daily with homemade meals, each of which she claimed was “Micky’s favorite,” and when she had time, she even did a little cleaning. Micky was still eerily quiet, and he still spent most of his time on moping around with a vacant expression, but at least he’d started showering semi-regularly.

***

Now, Micky was asleep on the couch, Peter was asleep in the downstairs bedroom, and Mike was upstairs, trying to take advantage of the alone time. He hated to admit it, but their naivety exhausted him. He couldn’t bring himself to say what he thought daily— that he believed Davy had simply left— and leave them to wade through the sense of betrayal and anger that accompanied it. 

It wasn’t a matter of why Davy would leave. Mike could think of no particular reason. But Mike had done his share of leaving and been left in the dust enough times to know that you didn’t always give a reason. You saw an opportunity to start fresh and you took it. 

Mike wasn’t a kid anymore, waiting on the porch for a man who would never return, as if staring down the road with enough intensity could collapse time, space, and reality. But he was asking himself the same question: How long would this limbo last? 

As if in response to the question, the phone rang.

Startled, Mike checked his watch. It was 1 am. He scrambled to his feet and down the stairs, then fumbled for the living room lamp in the darkness. After he located the switch, he found himself squinting at Peter and Micky in the sudden light— they both looked as disoriented as he felt.

In this pause, the phone rang a third time. Mike crossed the room and picked up the receiver. 

“Hello?” he said, the croak of his own voice startling him.

“Hello, is this Mike Nesmith?” a woman’s voice, vaguely familiar, replied.

“Yes…” Mike felt Peter and Micky staring at him. He was lightheaded, as though all the air had left the room. “Who is this?”

“It’s Jenny Waters. We went on a few dates awhile back, remember?”

He did remember, and he could picture her now— tall, red-haired, with a musical laugh. She had been busy finishing medical school and things had just fizzled out. He frowned, feeling speechless. Why would she call now?

“I’m working as an emergency department resident at the City of Hope hospital in Thousand Oaks,” she continued. “And I’m pretty sure my new patient is your friend Davy.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Mike Nesmith,” Mike told the man at the emergency room desk, feeling almost out of breath. “Dr. Waters said to meet her here.”

“I’ll have her paged,” the man said with infuriating calmness. 

As Jenny explained the situation over the phone, Mike had felt his extremities numb. Her voice had faded, and the next thing he knew, he was sitting on the kitchen floor with Micky and Peter supporting him on either side. He’d had to ask her to repeat the brief information she had shared:

“He’s unconscious but stable. That’s all I can tell you until you come identify him.” 

Mike had repeated the words to himself like a mantra as they made the drive to Thousand Oaks. They were an answer the question that haunted all three of them for three weeks: Davy was alive. 

After what felt like ages, Jenny appeared. Her vivid hair, the feature Mike remembered most clearly, was pulled back into a neat bun, and instead of wearing a colorful dress, she was wearing scrubs. He recognized her anyway and stood, motioning for Peter and Micky to hang back.

“Can we see him?” he blurted immediately, too desperate to remember the niceties he’d practiced in the car.

She hesitated. “There’s a procedure we need to follow. One of you has to identify him and sign paperwork before I can let you all into the ICU.”

“Okay,” Mike said, and motioned to his friends again. _I’ll be right back,_ he mouthed, and they nodded feebly. As he followed Jenny down the hall, he pictured Micky and Peter staring helplessly at his retreating figure. He hoped this wouldn’t take long.

“I just want to prepare you,” Jenny said in a hushed voice. “He’s in bad shape.”

She fell silent as they walked past the nurses’ station, giving Mike the impression that she hadn’t been speaking as Davy’s doctor, but as Mike’s friend.

She paused just outside an open doorway and looked down at the clipboard she was carrying. “For the identification procedure, the answer can be a clear yes, a clear no, or an unsure. If you’re unsure at all, you need to say so. That’s important, Mike.”

At Mike’s nod, she led him into the room. He felt a wave of nausea overtake him as he gazed at the figure in the bed. This person was so small, and too pale and thin to be Davy. Mike felt Jenny’s hand on his arm as he stared openly at the young man’s bruised face and arms, at his dull and sagging skin. He heard himself speak involuntarily: “No, this can’t….”

Jenny squeezed his arm, then moved toward the bed, fumbling with the neck of the hospital gown. She showed him the blue and white strand of love beads that hung around the man’s neck, and Mike felt himself begin to shake as the broken form in the hospital bed transformed— suddenly he was seeing Davy’s thick, dark hair, matted and long but still recognizable as the haircut Mike had given him weeks before; Davy’s full lips, now cracked and bloody; the unmistakable slope of Davy’s nose; the dense lashes that Micky sometimes teased him about.

“It’s Davy,” Mike whispered, taking a step forward. “I’m sure.”

“Hang on,” Jenny said, taking hold his arm again, but more firmly this time. “Can you please state his full name for me, and your relationship to him?”

“David Thomas Jones,” Mike said. “He’s my friend.”

***

Mike understood now that no words could prepare Peter and Micky to see Davy. For once, he hoped he looked as rattled as he felt, if only to convey an accurate level of despair to his friends as he approached them in the hospital’s waiting room.

“Did you see him?” Micky demanded. 

“How is he?” Peter asked.

Mike stared at them for a moment before any words came to him. “Jenny’s gonna come back out and talk to us in a minute.” His voice was shaky. He could tell by their twin expressions of shock that they’d gotten the message.

It was 4am when Jenny returned to collect them from the waiting room. She squatted before the three of them with Davy’s charts cradled in one arm.

“He’s severely dehydrated and in shock. It’s a cold night. If he’d been out on that road for a few more hours, we’d probably be having a different conversation right now. But I think he’s going to make a full recovery,” she explained. 

“What road? What was he doing there?” Micky piped up. 

“Somewhere along the 101 in Thousand Oaks— that’s all I know. Someone called in thinking he was inebriated, and the police brought him here. They’ll be here to ask more questions as soon as he wakes up. Look,” Jenny paused, looking troubled. “I have to share the same information with the police as I’m sharing with you.”

“Okay?” Mike said, puzzled.

“Davy has some strange injuries,” she continued. As she spoke, she unconsciously indicated corresponding locations on her own body. “Lacerations on his legs and arms— mostly scratches, but some of them are deep. Most of them are fresh. Maybe they happened yesterday. But he’s also got bruises of various ages on his face, neck, arms, and back. Some more than a week old.”

Mike had seen Davy, and these details lined up with what he remembered from that brief glimpse, but they were new to Micky and Peter, and Mike could sense them tensing up as Jenny spoke. 

“That’s not all,” she continued, but Peter broke in.

“We need to see him,” he said urgently. He gripped Mike’s arm. “Please, I know there’s more, but can we see him first?”

Jenny nodded, her expression full of compassion. She stood up and led them down the same hallway as before, motioning toward the door to Davy’s room. 

Mike hung back. He was in no rush to see Davy again, not in that state, and felt instinctively that he needed to keep his wits about him. The instinct was proven correct as Mike watched Micky immediately recoil from the room, nearly knocking Jenny over in his urgency.

“Mick,” Mike called weakly, watching him disappear through a door marked with an emergency exit sign. “Pete, I’ll be back, okay?”

Peter nodded, his eyes fixed on Davy. He was already pulling a chair up next to the bed.

Mike followed Micky’s path through the emergency exit door, and found him on a loading dock. He had his forearms and forehead pressed to the brick wall, and this behavior, along with his unkempt hair and filthy clothes, had clearly alarmed a group of young doctors who were taking a smoking break nearby. They were murmuring to themselves and staring, but Mike couldn’t be bothered to explain. 

Mike was good at solving problems, but there was no fixing how Micky felt, only helping him manage it. Davy, the youngest of four, had received a lot of comfort in his lifetime, and he knew how to give it back to his friends. Mike felt a fresh stab of loss thinking about just how much better Davy would handle in this particular situation.

“Hey,” Mike spoke softly, leaning one shoulder against the wall near Micky. “Jenny said he’s gonna be okay.”

“How could this _happen_?” Micky growled, turning toward Mike. His face was streaked angry tears that rapidly disappeared into his beard. 

“I don’t know, man,” Mike replied lamely. He was taken aback by Micky’s unfiltered grief; its intensity made his own feelings reflexively shrink away, like a crab retracting into its hole in the sand. 

“It’s so unfair,” Micky continued, rubbing at his tears with the palms of his hands. “We couldn’t help him.”

“We can help him now,” Mike pointed out. He placed his hand on Micky’s shoulder and nodded toward the doorway. A final spasm of anguish crossed Micky’s face before he wiped his tears on his shirtsleeve and agreed to follow Mike back inside. 

As they walked back toward Davy’s room, Mike worried about Peter, expecting to find him inconsolable, in tears, or maybe in hysterics at this point.

But when they finally entered the room, Mike was surprised. Peter was perched on the bed next to Davy, his expression serene as he smoothed Davy’s hair, trying to make it fall just right, so he would look like himself.


	5. Chapter 5

His body ached, but he ran anyway. In the nearly moonless night, he couldn’t make out the shapes of cacti or bushes or rocks until it was nearly too late to avoid them, and several times he fell as his clothing snagged on branches. Each time he scrambled back to his feet, afraid to stop moving.

Even if no one came after him, he had to outrun the cold.

His arms and legs stung, and where the pain was sharpest, his clothing stuck to him— he was bleeding, but there was no time to check every wound. The palms of his hands were raw from catching his falls. The only sounds were his own noises: crashing through patches of brush, scrambling over fences, and his breath, ragged and wheezing.

He ran for what felt like hours, gradually slowing to an exhausted stumble as his limbs went numb and leaden with cold. Things were becoming foggy— was he still moving in the right direction? How much longer could he keep going?

He began to lose momentum. He fell, crawling feebly for a few feet before resting his face against the rocky sand. Then, as if a miracle were occurring, he heard the roar of the ocean. He was almost there— almost home. With the last of his energy, he willed himself to his feet and began walking again, pushing through a wall of thorns toward what sounded like waves crashing. As he broke through the branches, lights danced in the horizon, just yards from where he stood. 

“No,” he whispered, dropping to his knees in disbelief. What he thought would be the shoreline was rocky asphalt with cars speeding by. Utterly disoriented, he clutched at the ground, finding no stability. He fell again, but this time, he felt no impact.

***

Davy was aware of nothing at first, then a dull ache seemed to carve a body out of the inchoate space. His eyes cracked open, and there was light— it was far too bright to see, which initially shocked him. Was he dead? How could death be so painful?

His eyes adjusted to the light slowly, and as he waited for his vision to return, he wiggled his fingers, wiggled his toes, and tried to think through the fog. He remembered running, the fear, and the cold, and felt an urgent need to understand where he was.

The room was unfamiliar— at least what he could see without moving his head. He blinked a few times, hoping something would change. When nothing did, panic welled up inside of him. Desperately, he turned his head toward the room’s light source and heard himself moan in pain.

The light was coming through a large plate glass window, the brassy glow of midday sun. Beneath the window, Peter was asleep in a chair, his head propped up by one arm.

Davy felt his fear melt a little. _I made it_ , he realized as tears of relief began to fall.


	6. Chapter 6

Mike woke with a start, heart pounding painfully against his ribs. The light in the room wasn’t right, the sheets weren’t the same texture— this wasn’t his bed.

Inexplicably panicked, he sat up and nearly bumped his head on the ceiling. He let out a long breath of relief, finally recalling where he was: the bunkbeds in Micky’s childhood bedroom. He quietly learned over the side of the bed to look at Micky, still sleeping on the bunk below.

Jenny had advised them to go home and rest, that she didn’t expect Davy wake for some time. Still, the three of them had sat in Davy’s hospital room until 8 a.m., at which point Micky had capitulated to Jenny’s advice and called his mother, who lived only 20 minutes from the hospital. 

Janelle had come immediately, folding Micky and Peter into a comforting hug while Mike stood aloof, feeling like the room’s protective gargoyle. She had urged them all to come home with her to eat and sleep, but Peter had politely refused, insisting that he would not be able to sleep if Davy was alone in the hospital.

Micky, however, was in no condition to refuse his mother’s offer. Weakened from weeks of eating too little and barely sleeping, Mike could see him visibly trembling as they changed into clean t-shirts belonging to his stepfather. “I’ll take the top bunk,” Mike told him before Micky could try and climb up there himself. Micky had nodded weakly, nearly disappearing into the white sheets of the lower bunk. He’d never seen Micky so fragile, and it was chilling.

Before falling asleep, Mike had stared at the ceiling for a long time, remembering how a nurse had come in to apply bandages to Davy’s cuts, some of which required sutures. Remembering impossibly small Davy looked lying in the bed, as though being unconscious somehow robbed him of stature. Remembering how they had watched Davy in silence, their only comfort his shallow but steady breathing.

He recalled Jenny’s final words about Davy’s condition: “He has severe bruising around his wrists and ankles,” she’d told them. “As though he’d been restrained for a very long time.”

Anger kept Mike awake until he succumbed to exhaustion. Anger, and guilt.

***

It was 3pm when Mike stepped into the kitchen, and Micky’s sisters were all at the kitchen table eating an after school snack. He tried to smile, but it felt more like a grimace.

“Mo-om,” said the littlest one— Mike tried in vain to remember if this was Gina or Debbie. 

“Wha-at,” came Janelle’s response from another room.

“Mom,” said Coco, looking at Mike shyly. “You are needed in the kitchen.” 

Janelle appeared and made a fuss over getting Mike something to eat. She seemed to sense that he was uncomfortable around the girls and set his plate in the dining room, leaving him there to eat alone while she made a fresh pot of coffee.

Within a few minutes, Mike saw Micky stumble into the kitchen— whereas Mike had taken time to neaten his hair and put pants on, Micky had simply rolled out of bed, and his sisters responded with glee, squealing “MICKY! We can see your underwear!” and “Why are you so hairy?” and “You need to shave!” and covering their eyes. 

“Leave him alone, girls,” Janelle said. “Micky, please put go pants on, and I’ll make you something to eat.”

By the time Micky returned, fully clothed, the girls had dispersed— Gina and Debbie were playing in the backyard, and Coco had reluctantly left to work on homework in her room. He joined Mike and they ate slowly and silently.

“I’m going to call the hospital and see how Peter’s doing,” Mike said finally, standing up.

Micky nodded, chewing wordlessly on a piece of toast.

Mike had scribbled the direct number for Davy’s room on a scrap of paper, but he suddenly felt inexplicably nervous about calling it. Instead, he called the ICU’s front desk and asked about Davy.

“Jones…. Here it is. It looks like he regained consciousness about an hour ago. We called the police department to let them know, and they’re sending an officer here to interview him right away. Would you like me to transfer you to his room to speak to him?”

“No,” Mike said. “No, I’ll come down and see him myself. Thank you.”

***

They didn’t take the time to shower, just hopped into the car and sped straight to the hospital, leaving their plates half-eaten. Knowing Peter was with Davy was comforting, but Mike wanted to be there when the police officer visited— for Davy’s sake and his own. The police had been so cavalier with the missing person report they’d filed for Davy that Mike felt someone ought to rub this in their face. 

As they neared Davy’s room, Mike sensed something was wrong. Micky slowed his pace, too, and together they took a moment to eavesdrop just out of sight of the people in Davy’s room.

“You’re telling me you remember nothing?” an unfamiliar man’s voice said. “Three weeks of nothing?”

“With all due respect, Officer Yates, Mr. Jones is recovering from a serious—” This was Jenny’s voice.

“He remembers where he lives, he knows the date, he told me the names of all the governors on the west coast— he’s not even American— but now he’s too _ill_ to remember where he was 24 hours ago?” Yates’s tone bordered on mocking. 

Mike couldn’t stand it anymore. He had to see this asshole’s face. He strode into the room, unable to hide his irritation. “And just who are you?” 

Davy was there, looking no less bruised but very alert in the bed. Peter stood beside him, his face brightening considerably when Mike appeared.

“What’s next, doc? Are the Mamas and the Papas going to show up? Can’t we get some privacy?” the man in the police uniform complained, slapping his notebook against the arm of his chair. He stood to address Mike, matching Mike’s height and nearly doubling the width of his chest. “Officer Yates. I’m the one who brought your friend here. And you are?”

“Mike Nesmith.” He felt himself glaring at the man, unable to hide his fury at this callous attitude.

Jenny stepped between them. “I think we’re done for the day, Officer. Additional questions can wait until my patient is discharged from the hospital.” She showed Yates out and slipped back into the room, closing the door behind her.

Micky squeezed himself into the bed next to Davy, who quietly uttered complaints about overcrowding even as he grinned with delight at the attention. The two of them— Micky, rail thin, and Davy, shrunken— fit perfectly side-by-side in the bed, and for a long moment, Mike watched them bicker about elbowroom as he basked in the first inkling of relief he’d felt in a long time.

“Yates is kind of a bully,” Jenny murmured, interrupting Mike’s trance. “But we can talk about that later. Actually, I need to get out of here. My double shift ended half an hour ago and I really need to sleep.” She gave Mike a little push toward his friends as she exited the room, highlighting the physical distance he’d been unconsciously maintaining. “We need to keep him here at least one more night, but you’ll have him home soon.”

Awake, and in the daylight, Davy seemed more substantial, as though the saline drip had delivered more than simply hydration. His face was recognizable again, animated as he tried, jokingly, to convince Micky that he was sitting on catheter tubing.

“Stop,” Micky pleaded, breathless from laughing.

Suddenly Mike remembered what Jenny had said about the bruising on Davy’s wrists and ankles. Her suspicions that he’d been restrained. The officer’s insistent questioning.

“Davy,” he blurted before he could think better of it. “Where have you been?”

Davy looked at him, his expression suddenly opaque. “I don’t remember,” he said, his tone almost defiant. Peter put a hand on Davy’s shoulder to offer comfort, trying valiantly to catch Mike’s eye, but Mike ignored him. 

“So you have amnesia or something?”

Davy shrugged. He folded his hands in his lap, and Mike noticed them for the first time: the knuckles were scabbed, and the wrists were purpled with bruises. Suddenly conscious of Mike’s gaze, Davy crossed his arms— an awkward gesture, since he had an IV in one arm— and stared solemnly at Mike.

“Maybe we can talk about it later,” Peter suggested. In his peripheral vision, Mike could see Micky’s head nodding. The two of them pleading with Mike not to question this stroke of good luck, not yet. 

If he didn’t back down now, he’d be no better than Yates, Mike realized. He raised an eyebrow, not breaking eye contact with Davy. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said finally.


	7. Chapter 7

_3 weeks earlier_  
After what seemed like ages, the truck veered off the highway and onto a dusty, unmarked road. Beside Davy, both girls were silent, staring off into the distance as they bounced and jittered over the bumpy dirt path.

He knew he was in trouble. He was now over an hour’s drive from home at an isolated location that didn’t seem to have an address. Heart pounding, Davy tried in vain to spot landmarks in the uniform landscape. Even the road itself would be inconspicuous to a stranger— he had a feeling that if it hadn’t been traversed earlier that day, it might have looked nearly as overgrown as the land surrounding it. 

Finally the truck slowed and came to a stop in a clearing next to a large, decaying barn. Inside a dilapidated fence, a paddock held a few skinny goats and skittish chickens. The cold front made the air less clear than usual, but through the slight fog, Davy could make out the shape of the farmhouse on the other side of the clearing.

The girls scooted off the truck bed, each grabbing one of the large, heavy-looking burlap sacks that they’d been sitting on. Johnny grabbed the third one. Johnny and the girls seemed to have forgotten he was there, and he stood helplessly for a moment, wildly pondering whether he should take off back down the road while he still had the chance. Once he hit the highway, he could hitchhike—

“Are you coming?” Molly cried, grabbing him by one hand. Johnny seemed to remember, then, that he’d invited Davy along. He watched stonily as Molly led Davy toward the farmhouse, waiting until all four had passed him before bringing up the rear.

“Can I take a look at at the horse soon? I’d like to get back home before dark…”

There was a long pause as the girls appeared to wait for Johnny to speak. When he didn’t, the oldest replied without turning around. “We have to unpack our supplies.”

She means the sacks, Davy realized. He lapsed into silence, unsure if it was safe to ask more questions.

The farmhouse, too, seemed to be deteriorating. Numerous details let Davy know people were living there— discarded jackets on chairs, a basket of folded laundry, a stack of dirty plates next to the sink— but it seemed inconceivable given the state of the place. There were broken floorboards and holes in a few of the walls. In the kitchen, a window was broken, and the large amount of dust and debris in the sink made Davy question whether the house was even hooked up to water.

The girls heaved the bags down in the kitchen and began sorting through their contents: it was mostly dried beans and rice, but there were also packets of detergent, some sewing supplies, and a case of cheap whiskey, the last of which Johnny disappeared with immediately into one of the upstairs rooms.

Davy didn’t know where the items belonged, so he stood back, watching the girls work. They seemed preoccupied, unaware of his presence, and chattered amongst themselves.

“I was hoping there’d be sugar,” the middle girl said, keeping her voice low.

“Hannah,” the oldest one said as though in warning.

“Maybe there will be more blackberries soon!” Molly chimed in.

“Maybe,” Hannah glanced at Davy, her expression almost angry, as though she resented his awareness of this conversation. Davy said nothing, trying to keep his expression neutral.

Soon Johnny came back, sipping from a stained mug. “So Davy, is it? Why don’t you come with me to see the old Charlie horse.”

Davy nodded, and he and Molly followed Johnny back out to the house’s porch.

“Molly, your sisters need your help getting dinner started. Go back inside. We’ll be back soon,” Johnny instructed, and Molly nodded obediently, giving Davy a bright smile before turning away.

The two men crossed the field in silence. Lagging behind Johnny slightly, Davy could see the cheap-looking pistol tucked into his belt. He felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. 

“Here he is,” Johnny crowed as he led Davy through the barn’s entrance and toward one of the farthest away stalls. “Molly’s very attached to him, you know.”

The horse inside the stall was certainly old, and certainly dying. He was on the ground, and only his eyes moved when they entered, rolling to look at Johnny then Davy. Davy knelt next to the horse, stroking its fly-bitten face and listening to its labored breathing. His stomach churned, frothing with disgust and sadness.

The pistol went off without warning, making Davy’s ears ring painfully. He thought, for one crazy moment, that he had been shot. But Johnny, standing in the stall’s entrance, had fired the bullet into the horse’s head, spattering Davy with blood.

“Nothing to be done,” Johnny said, tucking the firearm back into his belt. “Would have been cruel to let him keep going on like this.”

Davy stared up, speechless, as the man smiled serenely, a vague threat dancing in his expression.

“Now, come have a drink with me while the girls make us dinner.”

***

After that point Davy realized that there was nothing he could do. Or anything he could have done, once he’d made the decision to get into the truck with the girls. Johnny had a pistol hanging on one hip and the keys to the truck on the other. His tone remained friendly, but his body language and cool expressions made it clear: he was the one in control here, and all Davy could do was wait and see what he had planned.

He’d insisted Davy stay for dinner, rice and undercooked beans that they ate around a fire pit in the field— “Molly has just been dying for visitors.” No, he couldn’t call his friends to let them know where he was because they didn’t have a phone— “As you can see, this old farmhouse hasn’t been updated in awhile.” Then it was too late for Davy to leave— “Not safe to drive the truck down that road when you can’t see where the boulders are.” Nor would Johnny entertain the thought of him hitchhiking— “From way out here? You’ll get lost in the desert. Eaten up by coyotes.” And so on.

Davy’s only hope was that Johnny would drink too much and pass out— he seemed to have a full drink in his hand constantly, and as the night wore on, he took larger and larger gulps. But Johnny’s frame was large, and his tolerance seemed very high. Soon he was insisting Davy take drinks with him, pouring large splashes in an old coffee mug. The alcohol was strong, stronger than anything Davy normally drank, and with each drink he immediately felt his wits disintegrating, melting into a puddle of muddy thinking and uncoordinated movements.

Somehow, he found himself being led into the farmhouse, up the stairs— watch out, he vaguely recalled Hannah’s voice saying, that step’s missing— into a small, dark bedroom, empty except for the blankets the girls brought for him. The blankets smelled musty, or moldy, or unwashed… but it was too cold not to use them, and he piled them on top of himself to appease the girls.

He was tired, and his head was spinning. When the girls closed the door, a voice inside Davy’s head shouted: RUN. But not yet. He needed to wait until Johnny was gone. He couldn’t risk running into him on the staircase, or risk being shot at as he stumbled toward the road across the wide clearing. 

He waited. Johnny’s footsteps came up the stairs, heavy and loud because of his massive boots and drunken gait. Davy listened to Johnny walk the hallway, pausing at his door… then entering.

It was too dark to see the man clearly, only a vague silhouette as he stood in the doorframe, staring into the darkness, where he could surely make out Davy’s form beneath the light-colored blankets. The pain came suddenly— one kick. Another. Not rapidly, not angrily, but perfunctorily. Again, it was clear that Johnny knew he was in control of the situation and could take his time disabling his opponent. Not even an opponent, it occurred to Davy as he fought for breath, a victim. A seventh kick, an eighth… Davy lost count. 

When he regained consciousness, it was bright outside, and he was tied to the wall.


	8. Chapter 8

They stayed with Davy for another hour, until a nurse came to administer more pain medication through his IV. The opioids acted quickly, and within a few minutes, Davy was asleep, his head bobbing against Micky’s shoulder while Micky gesticulated, engrossed in the joke he was telling.

“We should go,” Mike whispered, redirecting Micky’s attention. Peter, too, was sagging, unable to disguise his exhaustion any longer. “They both need sleep. We need a break, too.”

Micky looked discouraged. “We can’t leave Davy here alone. He’ll wake up and wonder where we are.”

“We all need to rest,” Mike repeated. “Davy will be OK. We’ll stay at your mom’s again, and we’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

The corners of Micky’s mouth twitched downward, but he didn’t argue. He nudged Davy gently as he climbed out of the hospital bed, and explained that they would be back in the morning. 

“Come on Pete,” Mike said, pulling Peter to his feet. “Let’s get you in bed.”

***

The next morning, Mike woke first, grateful that this time he’d secured a spot on the pull-out sofa instead of Micky’s top bunk. Micky was asleep in the top bunk, Peter on the bottom bunk, and Mike lay in the quiet living room, guessing that any moment one of Micky’s younger sisters would be awake and shyly asking to watch Saturday morning cartoons on the family’s television set.

Peter had gone straight to bed, but Mike and Micky had eaten dinner with Micky’s entire family: his stepfather, Frank, home from that week’s business travels, Micky’s three sisters, and Janelle. Mike had no siblings and was always fascinated watching Micky’s family interact. There was a solidarity between the siblings that he’d never been capable of imagining as a child: Micky and Coco facing off with Janelle to wage a war against vegetables on behalf of Debbie, who didn’t want to finish hers; and Gina sticking up for Micky’s beard when Frank remarked on it. “I like it,” Gina had said, her lower lip protruding the way Micky’s did when he imitated a child. “He looks like a teddy bear.”

It wasn’t just that Micky’s siblings formed a bloc against unchecked parental authority, but also that they each garnered affection and respect from Janelle and Frank while doing so. Micky’s mother and stepfather seemed to delight in each child’s show of personality, whether or not it complied with expectations.

Had Mike ever felt this particular type of familial love at home? If so, he couldn’t remember it now. He remembered long evenings being berated, accusations leveled about facial expressions he didn’t know he was making or wrongs he didn’t know he’d committed. He remembered his own longing for siblings, not knowing what joy they could bring, only that they would dilute this outrage amongst more children. 

Was it the presence of siblings, or was it Janelle and Frank, that made Micky’s family something to be envied? If Mike thought about it too much, he’d never stop. So he had joined Frank in the good-natured jokes about Micky’s beard, making sure to shoot Micky a lopsided grin so they’d all be in on the joke.

Now it was morning. Peter padded into the living room, and noticing Mike was awake, sat down on the bed with him, grinning almost helplessly.

“What are you so happy about this early in the morning?” Mike said, sitting up.

“Davy’s back,” Peter replied. “He’s going to be okay, and Micky’s getting better— we’ll be playing gigs again soon. Everything is going to work out.”

Arguments popped into Mike’s head: Davy had been beaten half to death and the person responsible was still at large. He was lying about what he knew, and nobody knew why. And the depth of Micky’s depression had genuinely alarmed Mike— he hadn’t been able to move past that in a mere 24 hours. Moreover, as long as there was an ongoing police investigation, he doubted that they’d be able to book decent gigs. But Peter looked so serene and hopeful that Mike simply put a hand on his shoulder and nodded. “I hope you’re right, man.”

Janelle insisted they eat breakfast before heading back to the hospital. When Micky finally joined them, he’d shaved his beard, but left the sideburns, perhaps in attempt to hide the way his recent weight loss made his cheekbones more prominent. Mike decided not to remark on this, and it seemed as though Peter and Janelle had the same idea. 

“I’m going to bring some of my old clothes for Davy,” Micky announced, shoveling eggs into his mouth. “In case they send him home today.”

It wasn’t until they were in the hospital parking lot, climbing out of the car, that Mike realized Micky had brought so many options— 4 shirts and 3 pairs of pants. Because Davy is picky about what he wears, Micky had explained. 

The hospital had moved Davy earlier in the morning to make space in the ICU. He was now in a non-critical unit, and when they arrived, a nurse was in his room, holding his patient chart. She didn’t notice them come in— she seemed to be captivated by Davy the same way all girls were, despite how pitiable he looked in the flimsy hospital gown, his face covered in green and yellow bruises.

“You convinced Micky to shave,” Davy piped up, casually breaking what appeared to have been a long period of eye contact with the nurse, who left the room, looking sheepish. “But you couldn’t get him to do anything about his hair?”

Micky shook a fist at Davy with mock indignation, then tossed him the pile of clothes. “Want to get out of your gown, madame?”

“Wait, _you_ were on the cheerleading squad?” Davy laughed, holding up an old t-shirt emblazoned with “CANYON HIGH CHEER” on the front and “DOLENZ” on the back for Mike and Peter to see.

“My mom was the assistant coach. They needed guys to lift the girls. I met a couple of my girlfriends that way,” Micky rambled, sounding only moderately defensive. Mike pictured Micky in a cheerleading uniform, his hairy stomach peeking out under the tiny top, and couldn’t help but smirk.

Peter was sorting through the stack of shirts and pants Micky had brought and holding them up to his own waist with exaggerated shock. “What did you weigh in high school?”

“Same as he weighs now,” Davy snorted. “We wear the same pant size.”

Micky rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but I don’t have to have half a foot of fabric cut off the bottom of my pants.”

“Okay, okay,” Mike said, holding up his hands, but everyone was laughing. This was what having siblings could have been like, he thought. “Leave Micky and his stick figure body alone.”

Micky opened his mouth in wordless indignation.

“I’m keeping this one,” Davy grinned, putting the cheerleading shirt aside and putting a hand over his heart. “I’ll cherish it forever.”

It did seem like things could be normal again, Mike thought then. Maybe all they needed was time.


	9. Chapter 9

Davy thought returning to the Pad would fix everything. It had occupied most of his waking thoughts in the hospital— at least it did when Mike, Peter, and Micky weren’t around to distract him, and when the painkillers wore off enough to think clearly. Now that he was home, though, weaning himself off soporific narcotics, Davy saw that thinking clearly was the problem. And the Pad was not an immediate solution.

He remembered his excitement that morning as he changed into Micky’s old clothes to check out of the hospital. The doctors told him that his own clothes had been cut off of him in the emergency department. It seemed to be a satisfying end to the stylish shirt and hemmed pants that had soaked up his blood and sweat for weeks, fabric that felt like it was rotting off his body as he ran, half delirious, through the seemingly endless darkness.

Micky’s clothes— a red t-shirt that had faded to pink and was softened by so many washes, and pants he had to roll into a thick cuff to keep the hems from dragging on the floor— were a return ticket to normalcy. They smelled like Micky’s mother’s house, and vaguely like Micky himself, and Davy felt, or wanted to feel, the real comfort they offered. But that comfort was an illusion that had deteriorated rapidly as they left the hospital. 

He had white-knuckled the hour-long trip back to Malibu from the hospital, glimpsing landmarks that, three weeks ago, he’d watched fly by with increasing desperation from the back of Johnny’s pickup truck. He was experiencing that ride in reverse, but unable to articulate this, he had pretended to need rest, laying across the backseat and closing his eyes so that Micky and Peter stopped chattering to him and chattered to each other instead.

When they got home, the first thing he did was shower, taking extra time to examine the wounds he’d accumulated. They were healing more rapidly than he expected, though his sense of time now felt corrupted by his time in the farmhouse. When he finished showering, he stared at himself in the tiny bathroom mirror, feeling alien, removed from his own body, until Mike knocked on the door to ask if he was okay.

“I’m fine,” he called back, trying to force a joke. “Takes me longer to style my hair when it’s this long.”

As they ate dinner together for the first time in weeks, the last of the painkillers wore off, and the roaring ache in his muscles returned. Micky and Peter had been grinning at him all day, emitting all the joy about his return that he had expected to feel. Mike, though, seemed to be scrutinizing him.

“Do you want me to get you something for the pain?” Mike said, on his feet to retrieve the pills before Davy had a chance to even wince.

They’d sent him home with a large bottle of ibuprofen and a smaller bottle of opioids, or as Peter called it, “the good stuff.”

“Ibuprofen,” Davy said, using all of his willpower not to fold his arms on the table and bury his face in them.

“Jenny said you could take the stronger stuff at night to help you sleep,” Mike offered, rattling the bottle a little, raising his eyebrows. Davy shoot his head no, and Mike shrugged. “Okay, up to you.”

Davy wanted to stay up with them and play cards. He wanted to watch Peter stoke Micky and Mike’s irritation by crossing his eyes, sticking his tongue out in mock concentration, and letting half of the cards face backward, then annoy them further by winning the hand and pretending not to realize what had happened. He wanted to see Micky’s impression of a casino dealer, convincing until the moment the cards he was shuffling exploded from his hands and scattered all over the floor. He wanted to watch Mike’s expression when he thought he was doing a good job hiding a fantastic hand, but ultimately became so pleased with himself for maintaining a good poker face that he lost composure. 

But he was too tired. His body hurt where it touched the chair. Breathing was painful. He excused himself and went to bed, brushing off Peter’s offer to turn in early, too, so he wouldn’t be alone. “I’m fine. Relax. Enjoy the game.”

But as soon as he closed the bedroom door, he knew he was not fine. He changed, crawled into his bed, and flicked off the lamp. In the darkness, he was immediately transported back to the farmhouse, his arms stinging as though still bound to the wall. Scrambling, he groped for the lamp, nearly sending it crashing to the floor. He’d have to leave it on. 

He could hear the card game continue beyond the bedroom door and focused on his friends’ voices, which were just muted enough to be unintelligible. This can work, he told himself. I’ll just lay here listening until I fall asleep. In the morning, things will be different. It will be fine.

***

When Davy woke next, it was dark. He heard himself screaming, panicked, before he could take in what was happening: Peter’s hands were on his shoulders, and he was repeating: “Davy. Can you hear me? Wake up, David.”

How could he be home in his own bed and in the farmhouse simultaneously? The two places seemed enmeshed, and he struggled to untangle reality from dream.

“It’s okay,” Peter said, keeping his grip on Davy’s shoulders firm. 

“The light,” Davy mumbled, finally finding words.

Peter reached over to flick on the bedside lamp, and the two men squinted at each other as their eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness. Davy pushed himself up on his elbows, and the cool night air on his back made him realize he was soaked in sweat.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Davy shook his head. Peter stared at him for a long time, as though talking himself out of a long list of ideas about how to help. 

“Let’s go back to sleep,” Davy said, feeling embarrassed. “But I think I need the light on.”

He tried not to notice Peter settling uneasily back into his own bed. Instead, he stared at the ceiling, concentrating on the pain throbbing through his body. He could feel Peter watching him, waiting for Davy to make eye contact so they could exchange a look of solidarity. I can’t, he thought, and rolled on his side to turn away from Peter’s gaze.


	10. Chapter 10

“Mike, can I talk to you?” Peter asked as he stood from the breakfast table. 

They’d been sitting silently together for half an hour. The entire time, Peter had sipped tea in not uncharacteristic silence, lost in his own thoughts, while Mike scanned the newspaper for odd jobs and news items about Davy’s kidnapping. Mornings were often like this at the Pad: Micky and Davy slept in, and Peter and Mike had their own routines, sometimes intersecting, but mostly not. 

“What’s up?”

“On the veranda,” Peter said, tilting his head toward the beach.

Mike nodded, picked up his mug of coffee, and followed Peter outside. 

“Davy woke me up three times last night having nightmares,” Peter said when he’d softly closed the door behind them. He looked at Mike imploringly.

“I guess I’m not surprised,” Mike said, adding after a pause: “There’s a lot he’s not telling us.”

“He won’t talk to me,” Peter frowned. “And he always— well, he _usually_ tells me everything.”

Mike considered the regular program of topics Peter and Davy probably discussed: girls, Peter’s unlikely theories about how various plants evolved, girls, what the hippies are wearing, who had almost gotten them killed that week and how, more girls…

“Well, Pete, he’s not telling the cops anything either, and we don’t know why.”

“I thought he had amnesia,” Peter admitted sheepishly.

“Amnesia isn’t real,” Mike said bluntly. “He’s just plain hiding something.”

***

The four of them had shared the downstairs bedroom before. A few times, when they weren’t going to make rent, they took in a boarder to bring in some extra cash. Every once in awhile one of Micky’s science experiments would mean the room upstairs needed to be evacuated for a week or so. Now they were moving Mike and Micky’s beds downstairs for a different kind of experiment: to see if it helped Davy.

When Micky and Davy finally crawled out of bed, Mike had explained Peter’s idea to them and, since neither objected, he and Micky set out to move their beds downstairs. Moving furniture with Micky was always precarious because his mouth moved faster than his brain, and somehow Mike always found himself at the lower end of a bed frame as they maneuvered it down the spiral staircase. 

“Remind me—” he sputtered as Micky’s quilt slid off the tilted mattress and covered his face. “Why we didn’t take the bedding off first?”

“I think Peter’s right,” Micky went on, heedless to Mike’s distress. “I think Davy will feel so much safer knowing we’re all together.”

As they reached the ground floor, Mike shook his head to free himself from the quilt and nudged Peter and Davy’s door open with his shoulder. “I’m not so sure… sometimes bad dreams just have to play themselves out.”

As they set the bed in place, Micky let his end of the bed drop with a resentful crash. “Why did you agree to this if you don’t think it’s going to help?” he said, plainly irritated, and Mike could hear him stomping back up the stairs.

Mike, too, returned to their bedroom and watched Micky angrily rifle through his dresser, gathering an armful of boxers and t-shirts.

“Throw ‘em on my bed, let’s take it all down together.”

Micky glared at him but tossed the clothes on the bed anyway. They carried the second bed down in silence, and when both beds were in place, Mike put a hand on Micky’s shoulder to keep him from leaving.

“Look, I’m probably being pessimistic. This _is_ a good idea. It’s the only idea we have. But I think on some level you just have to go through your own shit and come out the other side.”

“Maybe that’s what you tell yourself so you don’t have to try as hard,” Micky said bitterly, tossing his clothes from Mike’s bed onto his own and striding out of the room.

***

Micky was rarely angry with anyone, but even more rarely was he angry with Mike, who he admired in such a naked way that it often made Mike uncomfortable. His irritation made Mike think: Was he wrong to suggest they couldn’t help Davy?

Mike remembered his own nightmares, which seemed to start as soon as he arrived in California and continued for months, eventually becoming less and less common until he was surprised to have one. He didn’t believe that dreams were prophetic, but these dreams— more memorable for the intense emotions they evoked than their contents— seemed to have a genuine psychological purpose. 

Sometimes they served as reminders not to fall in with the wrong type of people (after all, he’d left Texas to escape condemning and controlling people). Sometimes he thought of the dreams as a holding pen for the growing pains of caring and advocating for himself in the world. But in a way, they underscored the pleasantness of his new life; looking back, he could see that he’d spent the entire first year in Los Angeles in withdrawal from the abuses he’d endured his entire life. 

It wasn’t until that night, watching Micky and Peter fuss over Davy as they got ready for bed, that real clarity came to Mike: sure, there was nothing those three could have done to end his nightmares. It was a process that he had to complete to move on with his new life. But friendship had made the waking hours in-between infinitely more bearable. To Mike, the real value of combining bedrooms was that it let Davy know they noticed and cared. 

Peter was crawling around on the floor from outlet to outlet, experimenting with different locations and different lamps to see which ambiance Davy preferred. Davy was propped up in bed by 9 different pillows that Micky had arranged around him as a kind of fortress, half joking and half serious in his quest to make Davy comfortable. Davy appeared genuinely delighted by the attention.

Friendship is not un-meaningful, Mike thought, realizing that his comments to Micky had unintentionally conveyed the opposite conviction. He’d apologize to Micky tomorrow. And maybe, if he paid enough attention, he’d find his own way to help Davy.


	11. Chapter 11

Things got worse before they got better. Mike wasn’t surprised. 

Word had gotten out that Davy was home. Although they hadn’t exactly kept it a secret, not broadcasting Davy’s whereabouts had seemed like a good idea while he was the subject of an unsolved police kidnapping investigation. But as soon as Mrs. Purdy caught a glimpse of him through the kitchen window, news about Davy’s return filtered through the neighborhood.

The phone started ringing. Girls started stopping by unannounced. Davy didn’t want to talk to anyone. In fact, he hadn’t even wanted to get out of bed most of the week that he’d been home. At first this didn’t seem strange— he was bruised all over and exhausted. But as his visible injuries faded, it became obvious that something else was going on. He was hiding.

Today had been particularly rough on everyone; it was mid-afternoon, and Davy had not gotten out of bed. This had never happened in the two years they’d known him— after a breakup or a particularly demoralizing escapade, they’d always been able to bolster Davy’s spirits with kind words and a few dumb jokes. Now he was unresponsive to attempts at conversation, and it alarmed all of them.

“We’re going to the beach. Want to come, Davy?” Peter asked. He and Micky had invited Davy outside so many times that week that the question sounded almost like begging. No, Davy didn’t want to go to the beach. He wouldn’t even sit on the veranda, as if just being in the sun was too much to bear. This time when they asked, Davy didn’t even make eye contact, just shook his head. 

Davy’s despair triggered a desperation in Mike that went beyond his desperate response to Micky’s recent depression. No matter what happened to Micky, Mike could always call his family for support. The three of them _were_ Davy’s family, the same way Davy and the others were Mike’s. Worried that he was failing Davy, Mike felt his own sense of security faltering.

At the same time, Mike had a strong sense that Davy wasn’t free-falling, though all four of them were currently experiencing it that way. Mike could remember his own reaction to finding freedom away from his family in Texas, how every day brought on fresh reminders and realizations about the pain of captivity. Sure, he’d been happy to finally live the life he’d been dreaming of. But there were still injuries waiting to manifest themselves, and it took years for Mike to disengage from them. He suspected the same held true for Davy.

While Peter and Micky were out, Mike went to sit on the front porch with his guitar, telling Davy he wanted to experiment with the acoustics out there. In reality, he was guarding against visitors. After a few minutes, a car pulled up, and Jenny got out, wearing one of the brightly patterned dresses Mike remembered from their brief period of dating.

“You’re a hard man to get a hold of,” she said in greeting.

He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“I’ve been trying to call for two days, and your phone is always busy.”

“Oh… We’ve been leaving it off the hook. People have been trying to reach Davy nonstop since we got home,” Mike replied. “You didn’t come all the way out here because you couldn’t get me on the phone, did you?”

She smiled ruefully. “Well, I wanted to check on my patient. And Officer Yates has been on my case about being unable to contact you.”

Yates. Mike had almost forgotten about him, but now he felt a spike of dread thinking about how Davy would respond to being interrogated again. Not well, he suspected. He still hadn’t said a word about his ordeal to any of them, and Mike, Peter, and Micky seemed to have an unspoken agreement that it still wasn’t the time to ask. 

Mike opened the front door and motioned her inside.

“Can I say hello or is he sleeping?” Jenny asked, looking at the closed bedroom door. 

Mike shrugged. He doubted Davy was sleeping, but he was often pretending to. Unexpectedly, he was struck by a memory of himself as a teenager: pretending to sleep, or rather willing himself to be asleep, in an attempt to bypass large swaths of time in his mother’s house. The suddenness of the emotion this brought on caused the corners of his mouth twitch downward before he could catch himself.

“What’s wrong?” Jenny asked, touching his shoulder.

“He’s not himself lately,” Mike said, vaguely. There was so much more he could say: they’d watched Davy’s mood fade over the last few days from joyous to dull. Even his face, normally preternaturally expressive, seemed to have flattened. They had to prompt him to eat and drink. But Mike felt suddenly protective over Davy’s privacy, and Jenny seemed to understand.

“I’m just going to pop in and tell him it’s a house call from his doctor,” she said with a wink, and slipped into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

***

Later, after Jenny had gone, Mike sat at the kitchen table, waiting— for what? He wasn’t sure. He felt strangely apprehensive. Weeks ago he would have given anything to lounge in the living room alone for a few hours, but now the Pad’s eerie silence was all he could think about. 

The door to the downstairs bedroom clicked and opened slowly. Davy stood there in his bathrobe, holding a towel. He was pale, and unsmiling, but he looked at Mike with what seemed like less detachment than when Mike had last spoken to him. 

“I’m going to take a shower,” Davy said, his expression guarded. “Afterward, would you give me a haircut?”

“Okay,” Mike said, watching Davy cross the room. What had Jenny said, and why hadn’t the three of them thought to say it?


	12. Chapter 12

As Davy showered, he deliberately ignored his own body— seeing it reminded him how deeply he didn’t feel like himself. None of his clothes fit right. He’d lost muscle. He looked scrawnier than Micky. Even if he started eating more and lifting weights right now, it would be weeks before he’d be recognizable.

It shouldn’t matter, but it did.

When he was done showering, he shaved, something he hadn’t bothered to do in days. After shaving, with the dark mass of long, wet hair framing his face, and his bruises now almost completely faded, he looked even more pale than before. He allowed himself to stare at his reflection for a few long seconds, hating it, before turning away.

_“You’re going to get better,” Jenny had said. “When that starts happening is kind of up to you now.”_

She was right. But that wasn’t what made him get out of bed.

Now he dressed, noticing but trying not to notice the looseness of his pants. He may as well have been wearing one of Mike’s shirts, for how well it fit. 

_“Don’t quote me on this, but I don’t care what you tell Officer Yates. I do think you need to talk to someone about what happened, though,” Jenny had continued. “Your friends can help you, if you let them.”_

Nobody can help me, he’d thought bitterly, but after she left, the idea stayed in his mind. He’d almost forgotten about Yates and the stupid way his face reddened as Davy refused to provide useful answers to his questions. Yates, who first thought he was a draft dodger, then seconds later accused him of abetting draft dodgers. Yates, who, like Johnny, would flatten anyone in his path, even the victim of a crime he was investigating.

Davy knew none of his friends _liked_ Yates— they all distrusted cops because of how they treated young people around Los Angeles. But now he tried to remember, though the foggy painkiller haze that blurred all his memories from the hospital, how they had each responded to the officer. Peter, with infuriating equanimity, had gently squeezed Davy’s shoulder and reminded him that Yates was trying to do his job. Micky had had no reaction; he’d simply moved on after Jenny escorted Yates from the room. But was he remembering correctly? Mike had been visibly angry.

Mike can help me, Davy decided. At least with Yates.

***

Mike squatted in front of Davy, running his fingers through Davy’s hair to make sure the two sides were even, trimming and re-trimming until he was satisfied with the proportions on each side. 

Davy felt him touch the large scab hidden in his hairline, the last tangible reminder of Johnny’s boot assault that first night in the farmhouse. Their eyes met for a long moment. Davy waited for Mike to ask him the obvious question. Mike’s face registered a restrained surprise and a little sadness. 

“Close your eyes,” Mike said, and began trimming Davy’s bangs. “Okay, open.”

Davy touched his still-damp hair, relieved by the loss of length. Like his clothes, it was a rare reminder of his ordeal that he was able to literally cut off and throw away. “Thank you,” he whispered, a lump forming in his throat.

Mike busied himself with sweeping the hair clippings on the floor into a dustpan as Davy tried to decide where to begin. 

“Mike?”

“Uh huh?” Mike responded, preoccupied with a large tumbleweed of dust and curly hair— Micky’s— that he’d located under the couch while sweeping.

“I need your help with Officer Yates,” Davy said. 

“How long d’you think this has been here?” Mike mused, raising an eyebrow at the tumbleweed. He paused for a long time. “I want to help you, Davy, but I need you to tell me how.”

Something fluttered in Davy’s chest— hope, maybe— and he knew he’d made the right decision.


	13. Chapter 13

_3 weeks ago_

The first time Davy woke in the tiny bedroom with his hands and ankles bound to the wall, he was in too much pain and shock to truly panic. It was all he could do to take in the effects of Johnny’s boots: bruised ribs forced him to take shallow breaths, and the throbbing in his head was punctuated by sharp pain with any facial expression. The blankets strewn around him were matted with blood; he suspected he was still bleeding and worried his head wound needed stitches. 

He must have been in and out of consciousness the entire day, because from time to time the shadows in the room seemed to have changed angle suddenly, as if the sun were hurdling forward instead of making a steady arc across the sky. He recalled no visitors and heard no footsteps outside his door. It wasn’t until evening fell that he began to hear the small noises of dinner preparation downstairs.

Hannah was the first girl to enter the room. She held a heavy flashlight in one hand— a Maglite, Davy realized, heavy enough to bludgeon him if needed— and a bowl in the other. Her expression was stony and she averted her eyes as she pressed the bowl to his lips, letting him sip a slimy porridge that made him gag. When he refused to continue, she left wordlessly.

The first fingers of panic gripped him overnight as his consciousness became more steady. He tested his bonds and determined they were secure. The room became impossibly dark, the farmhouse was silent, and this limbo stretched on and on. He was afraid to call for help and elicit a second visit from Johnny that he was certain he would not survive. 

It wasn’t until a hint of daylight began to glow at the edges of the window that he was able to fall asleep; even then, his sleep was fragmented, broken by noises that generated equal hope and fear that someone would enter the room.

***  
 _Now_

Lately when Davy woke, his heart pounding, unable to shake the sensation of bindings that had been cut from his wrist weeks ago, he was able to keep from screaming. Peter had borrowed a small lamp from a friend, and Davy kept it lit all night on the floor next to his bed, its tiny bulb encasing his bed in a comforting bubble of light. Whatever images lingered from his nightmares, seeing the peculiarities of their bedroom provided a clear message that he was no longer a captive in the farmhouse, at least not in reality.

Next to him in the twin bed, Micky slept on. Davy stared at him, struggling to remember why he was there through the eddying panic that seemed to stall all other thoughts— they’d been reading a comic book together by the light of his bedside lamp. They’d fallen asleep. The comic lay open on Micky’s chest, and Micky’s hand resting on top of it kept it from sliding off the other edge of the bed. 

I could get in Micky’s bed, Davy thought, but he didn’t move. There was something compelling about the proximity to Micky’s body, a calming sense that he was neither alone nor under scrutiny. Davy lay still, watching with interest the expressions that flickered across Micky’s sleeping face, miniature versions of his normal repertoire. Normally Davy was unable to sleep for hours after a nightmare, but now he drifted, only aware that he had fallen asleep because of Micky’s shifting position— back to side, then side to stomach, face buried in his arms.


	14. Chapter 14

“Is he okay?” Peter asked, joining Mike on the upstairs balcony, where Mike now realized they could see Davy on the beach below, doing pushups in the twilight.

Mike shrugged. “He’s outside. He’s doing things. Weren’t we concerned when he wasn’t?”

Peter bit his lip. He was unconvinced. “Yeah. But I wish he seemed more…”

“Carefree?” Mike suggested. His eyes met Peter’s. Certainly there was nothing carefree about Davy since he’d been returned to them— his bruises were healed, he had regained energy and stamina, but he still moved through each day with a wariness that was almost painful to watch. Nearly a month had passed, and he’d deftly avoided talking to anyone but the three of them, and Jenny, when she visited. 

“I still don’t understand why he won’t cooperate with the police,” Peter said, changing the subject. “Do you—”

“What he told me was in confidence,” Mike said protectively. “I don’t think it’s about keeping a secret from you, or the police. It’s about knowing he can trust someone. If I tell you, and he finds out, it could undo—” he gestured down to Davy. “It could undo whatever progress he’s been able to make.”

Peter nodded, and with a final look at Davy, left Mike alone on the balcony again.

***

What Mike knew about Davy’s disappearance had come in bits and pieces that Mike had to put in order himself. He only permitted himself to ask a Davy few direct questions— nothing to satisfy his own curiosity, only the information he needed to plan.

First, there was the matter of Officer Yates. Neither Davy nor Mike trusted him. He still came by the Pad almost weekly, unannounced, to present various pieces of evidence to Davy. Photographs of houses, people, and vehicles; addresses; items of clothing. He seemed to be running investigations on multiple draft dodgers and runaways simultaneously and had convinced himself that Davy was the link between all of them. Mike suspected that there was money incentivizing Yates’s missing-persons fervor— federal money to reward the return of draft dodgers, perhaps, and rewards from well-off families whose daughters and sons had run off to join a bohemian movement. 

“I truly have no idea what you’re talking about,” was Davy’s typical response during one of these visits. “I’ve never seen this person before in my life.”

And nearly every time, Mike believed him— Yates was clearly grasping at straws, fixating on Davy only because Davy had obscured progress on his own kidnapping investigation and refused to provide an explanation.

But Mike had become good at reading Davy— reading this new version of Davy, that is. Before his disappearance, Davy had practically been an open book, wearing his emotions so plainly on his face that sometimes Mike felt embarrassed for him. Now, his mental state shifted more subtly. Tracking its changes was like learning braille, a skill that required developing exquisite sensitivity to signals too fine for most people to detect.

“I’ve never seen this person before in my life,” Davy had told Yates, but his inflection had changed on the word “person;” the word wavered a bit, as though it had difficulty exiting his mouth. 

“You knew that girl,” Mike had pressed Davy later, when they were alone. It was the first tangible indication that Davy had spent any of his disappearance in the company of others. “Was she with you there?”

“She helped hold me captive,” Davy had said. “But she’s also the reason I’m alive.”

Now Mike leaned over the edge of the balcony, shading his eyes from the glare of the sunset over the ocean to watch Davy run sprints up the hill from the water to the house. As he returned to the bottom of the hill to start a new sprint, Davy caught a glimpse of Mike and waved, smiling his new smile— closed-mouthed and determined. Mike waved back.

Beyond managing Yates, they were planning.

“When will we do it?” Davy had asked him, just over a week ago. In the early morning hours, Mike had followed him from the bedroom to the living room, where Davy often retreated after a nightmare woke him and he couldn’t return to sleep. Davy was still trembling, but his expression was not fearful. 

“When will we do it,” he repeated, his voice hissing with anger and impatience.

“When you’re strong again,” Mike had said.


	15. Chapter 15

It was only 9 am but the breezeless day was already hot. Davy and Micky had spread towels on the sand to sprawl in the sunlight. Like countless times before, Micky was borrowing a pair of Davy’s swim trunks, because somehow all of his own were wet and cold from consecutive days of forgetting to hang them to dry. And as usual, he was indecisive about which side of Davy he wanted to lay on; he had meticulously inspected the sand around Davy’s blanket for disturbances— glass, rocks, crab tunnels— in what Davy jokingly called Princess and the Pea-ing. 

“Sit down already, you’re blocking my light,” Davy said, shading his eyes to see what Micky was up to now.

“You’re not even tanning,” Micky pointed out.

Davy wore a t-shirt to hide the scars on his torso and protect them from sunburn. Marks were still visible on his arms and legs, but it was too hot to cover up completely— something had to give. He swiped at Micky’s ankles, trying to take him down. “Neither are you, unless trying to merge freckles counts.”

Micky finally smoothed his towel and lay down, turning on his side to look at Davy thoughtfully. “We used to come out here to meet girls,” he said. “Remember the old days?”

 _Old days,_ thought Davy. _Less than 2 months ago._ It felt like a different lifetime.

“I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean…” Micky trailed off, looking frustrated with himself.

“Things are different now,” Davy admitted, allowing himself to feel the pain this brought. He could vividly remember the joy he’d once felt cruising the beach for chicks with Micky; simultaneously, he could not imagine ever wanting to do it again. He stared into the ocean, picturing particles of sand that would be carried so far out to sea they would never be returned to this beach. 

“Not bad different, just different,” Micky said. His tone indicated an attempt to be comforting but an awareness that this might be impossible. 

Davy could feel Micky watching him intently; his neck prickled a little, despite the heat. 

“Sometimes it’s bad, for me,” Davy replied finally, still staring ahead, thinking about the rhythmic disappearance of sand. “But it could be worse.”

***

Davy had rapidly lost track of days in the farmhouse bedroom. The girls seemed to enter on a regular schedule, bringing him liquified rice or beans in the evenings, but his sleep— if it could even be called sleep— was so randomly interspersed through the days and nights that he had trouble marking time. 

Hannah’s visits were stony and silent; her distrust of him seemed to grow even as he felt himself becoming increasingly helpless. The oldest girl, whom Molly called Patricia, seemed upset by his presence, whether on his behalf of her own, Davy wasn’t sure. But most disarming was Molly: after her initial tears about his ragged appearance subsided, Davy became a kind of pet that she whispered furtive secrets to, chattering trivial grievances about Hannah and Patricia or couching complaints about Johnny within stories about her day. Even when she presumed they were alone, she was careful not to betray the man.

Other than Molly’s quotidian gossip, Davy had learned little about the group of people whose far-flung existence he’d been unfortunate to stumble upon. He knew the girls revered Johnny, though with caveats: he drank too much, and (according to Molly) distributed chores unfairly. But none would disobey him— Davy was certain of that. 

“What’s going to happen to me?” he begged each of them when as they fed him his nightly gruel. “You could let me go— I won’t tell anyone you’re here. I promise.”

Molly’s responses were frivolous. “Johnny always has a plan. He’s not so bad. He’s not as bad as you think. He’s just protecting us, is all,” she would ramble, then quickly return to a soliloquy on Patricia’s unfairness about laundry.

His pleas were met with blank stares from Hannah and Patricia. Perhaps in daylight, he may have been able to detect more in their expressions, but after sunset, with the Maglite pointed at the ceiling, all he could read was foreboding. 

_I’m going to die here,_ Davy thought as he stared into the black void of night, his body aching in its constraints.

***

“I’m going to fall asleep here,” Micky murmured, not opening his eyes. “I should go to my own bed.”

“Stay one more minute, let me finish this page,” Davy whispered, not looking at the comic book at all.

He held his breath. Micky would fall asleep in a minute, and if Davy lay still long enough, he would stay asleep for hours, filling the negative space that tormented Davy when he woke from his still-regular nightmares. 

_Is this wrong?_ Davy wondered, trying to place himself in Micky’s shoes, but only able to imagine the dread he felt when faced with another harrowing night alone in his bed. He closed his eyes, listening as Micky’s breathing relaxed into a steady rhythm, and fell asleep picturing the ocean.


	16. Chapter 16

Both Davy’s story and Mike’s plan assembled themselves bit by bit, in uncertain order, in Mike’s mind. There was information missing on both ends that Mike needed to complete the circle: Who had hurt Davy? And where did it happen?

_When_ they would act also remained uncertain, though the planning itself had an obvious effect on Davy. He had put on muscle, though he hadn’t regained the roundness in his face that clearly identified him as the baby of the group; his new shape was more compact and angular. He wore his hair shorter, too, no longer tolerating the weeks he used to wait between requesting trims from Mike. 

“You’re barely a hippie anymore,” Peter had joked after a recent haircut. “I’m going to have to confiscate your love beads.”

Davy had smiled uncertainly, fingering the blue and white beads around his neck, which Mike suspected he continued to wear only as an amulet. He avoided most of the wardrobe that had been his favorites before the ordeal: he’d returned the paisley patterns borrowed from Peter, abandoned any floral patterns and bright colors that he had previously been drawn to. Instead, he wore long-sleeved t-shirts to hide the deep scarring on his arms, in solid blacks and blues and grays that resembled Mike’s own wardrobe. 

But for the first time in the month since he’d returned, Davy was sleeping through the night— or at least appearing to, since they no longer woke to find him pacing on the veranda or slumped in the window seat, catching up on hours of interrupted sleep. He had more energy. He stayed up late playing cards with Peter, or watching bad television with Micky. Mike was grateful that the Pad was noisy with laughter and practical jokes again.

They were making money again, too. Mike was limiting their gigs to private parties for the time being. Surprisingly, perhaps due to the sheer volume of parties they had booked to make rent that month, word had gone around that the Monkees were an excellent hire. They were being offered better and better paid opportunities. And, in the weeks they _hadn’t_ performed, Mike had written a few songs that weren’t suitable for the Monkees’ sound and sold them to local groups, something he’d never done before and felt absurdly proud of. 

Mike wondered if his own psychological recovery just a few years ago had been as noticeable to the others as Davy’s. It embarrassed him to remember his own troubles, but the relief he found in Davy’s improvement seemed to lessen that sting: recovery wasn’t a punishment for having been hurt, it was a gift. Davy should— and by extension, Mike knew he himself should— be proud of the progress he’d made.

“I was so worried about Davy,” Jenny had admitted recently. She dropped by on most of her days off to join them for dinner or, if they were working, discreetly crash the party to hear them play. “But he seems to be doing so well.”

Months ago, Micky and Davy would have teased him endlessly about his vague relationship with Jenny. They would have spied on the two of them. Mike would have heard them giggling in the upstairs window while he walked Jenny to her car. With Jenny, there was a lot to be curious about: She was older; she was good looking, gorgeous even, with her shockingly red hair and vibrant style; she was certainly smarter than Mike. But, remarkably, his friends restrained themselves. Mike suspected he had Davy to thank— he doubted Micky, even with the best of intentions, would exert this level of self-control on his own. 

In short, things were good, which was a rarity in Mike’s experience with life. He felt content, maybe for the first time ever. He would have been happy for things to continue this way— to let the Monkees’ work quietly evolve toward private performances, to improve his songwriting skills, to deepen his relationship with his friends and watch them grow, to see where things were going with Jenny, and to never enact his Plan—but one morning, when Officer Yates dropped by unexpectedly yet again, he knew things were about to change. 

***

“Jones, I have some more evidence for you to review,” Yates announced without greeting when Davy responded to his knock. 

“Oh, lovely,” Davy said, rolling his eyes and looking to his friends for backup. 

Micky and Peter cleared space on their cluttered kitchen table while Mike pulled up a 5th chair for Yates to sit down. It was easier to let Yates make his demands and get him out of the house than it was to argue— they’d all learned this rapidly. 

Yates slapped a folder on the table. “Take a look at these photos. Do you recognize the location?”

Blankly, Davy reviewed the photographs. They were scenes from the side of a highway, way out in the desert. Mike leaned to get a better look— he couldn’t spot any defining features, just a random array of cacti and other desert flora without any road markers to be seen.

Davy shook his head, no, and waited for Yates to continue.

“Funny,” Yates remarked bitterly. “This is right where we picked you up, that night.”

The hair on the back of Mike’s neck rose. In all his interrogations of Davy, Yates had never dropped that particular detail. Davy, in his subtle way, looked shaken.

“I don’t remember it,” he said. “It was so dark. There are no landmarks…”

“Highway 101, right around mile marker 55. And just what do you think is out there now?”

Davy shrugged. Yates gestured toward the pile of photos, prompting Davy to view the next one. The next photo included a similar landscape, but in the foreground was a battered white pickup truck. Davy stared at it wordlessly for a long time before looking up.

“You know it?” Yates asked. He had an irritating tone in his voice. Mike sensed that, like his other visits, he was building up to something, but that this time he was more confident that it would be meaningful. 

Davy did not move. He stared at the photo, his face unreadable.

“Engine’s busted. Abandoned near the road at the same location. No plates or registration or anything to be found. But we ran the VIN…” Yates waved his finger in a circular motion, indicating that Davy should flip to the next photograph.

It was a mugshot of a man just a few years older than them. He had sandy hair, a 5 o’clock shadow, and an unhappy expression on his face. But what jumped out at Mike were his eyes— there was something unbelievably cruel there.

“Francis Johnson. He was picked up a few years ago in Sacramento on a domestic battery charge, skipped his court date, and I guess he skipped town because now his truck’s turned up in Thousand Oaks.” Yates watched Davy intently now, asking, “Look familiar?”

Davy shook his head, pushing the pile of photographs back toward Yates.

“We showed his picture to some guys in the rougher parts of town who think he’s got some hideaway with a bunch of underage runaways. Not exactly the kind of guy you’d want to protect, is it?”

“Sounds like a real piece of garbage,” Davy agreed. “Sorry I can’t help you.”

“Amnesia’s a funny thing, isn’t it? Maybe you’ll remember something and call me in a couple days.” 

***

After Yates left, Mike made a show of needing some alone time to finish a song he was writing, which prompted Micky and Peter to head down to the beach. Soon after they had gone, Davy found him in the bedroom, slipping inside without preamble or apology. 

Their eyes met, and Mike felt the remaining pieces of the plan shift into place. Davy’s expression confirmed that Yates’s photos had exposed the final details he would share of his ordeal, the crucial information they needed to enact their plan. 

“It’s him,” Davy said.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this? It sounds like the cops are going to handle it.”

Davy frowned. “I don’t trust them to get it right.”

_But you trust me,_ Mike thought, and allowed himself to feel, briefly, the dizzying lunacy of what they were about to attempt. He took a deep breath, then nodded, reaching out to squeeze Davy’s shoulder and feeling the muscle he had built there in response to Mike’s request that he become stronger. 

“Route 101. Mile marker 55. We’ll go tonight,” Mike confirmed.


	17. Chapter 17

Davy kept his breathing steady as Mike turned onto Highway 101 heading west. At this time of night, businesses were closed, and the highway’s darkness benevolently concealed many of the details that would have reminded him of his first ride to the farmhouse. There wasn’t room for his panic in their plan. 

“There’s still time to turn back,” Mike broke the silence, glancing at Davy in the passenger seat. “We could go home, you could just move on from this.”

“This is how I move on,” Davy said steadily.

He pictured Johnny then. He remembered Johnny’s cruel eyes in the mugshot, Johnny’s expression after shooting the horse, the unfeeling expression on his face etched in darkness as he thrashed Davy’s body with his heavy boots. 

Johnny must have easily earned the girls’ trust. He had an easygoing smile and calm demeanor. He provided them with the thing they all desperately needed: a place to hide. He must have sensed the vulnerability in the girls, like a shark sensing a speck of blood in miles of ocean: Patricia, with her poorly-hidden anxiety about shifts in rules and moods; Hannah’s avoidance, which masked her desperation for closeness; Molly, especially, unable to disguise the instinctual resentment of women that forced her to cling to men. Their past pain beckoned Johnny; it made them easy to charm and easy to exploit.

Davy could see the girls’ desperation now, too, but men like Johnny were not casual observers of vulnerability. They hunted. They would continue to hunt. 

The commercial zones of Thousand Oaks were petering out, now, giving way to undeveloped desert that was peppered with struggling and abandoned farms. They passed mile marker 45. 46. 47.

Davy’s own beating that first night in the farmhouse had been a sink for Johnny’s violence, providing the girls with a deceptive respite from their normal routines. But within a week in captivity, he would see Molly enter his room with a black eye. The normal tinkering sounds of dinner preparation downstairs would be punctuated by a girl’s scream, a long period of silence, then resume. Hannah brought him dinner with deep bruises dug into her arm in the shape of a large hand, visible even in the dim light. Patricia had stopped wearing her hair in a braid to cover a long scrape on her neck.

The girls had evaded his questions. Whatever they endured now was more tolerable than what they were hiding from, he was sure of that. Davy’s body burned with anger when he thought about Johnny building his life upon the pain the girls had endured in the past. 

“This isn’t it for you,” he would tell them, though it sometimes lost him the privilege of eating that night or led to a bowl of gruel poured impatiently down the front of his shirt. “There are better places out there.”

At the very end, Davy had become resigned to thinking that the girls were too far gone, that they’d been robbed of the ability to imagine a life without unpredictable violence and pain. 

Until Hannah entered his room one evening, a trickle of blood running from her hairline, her eyes filled with anger and unshed tears.

“I hate him,” she hissed as she put the bowl to Davy’s lips. “I hate him.”

She returned hours later, after the house had gone silent, her footsteps in the hallway nearly undetectable. Wordlessly, she used a serrated knife to erode the thick ropes that bound Davy’s arms. When they were free, she moved away, pressing the knife’s handle into his hands so that he could free his legs.

“Whatever you think this is, home is worse,” she whispered. “Don’t tell anyone where we are.” 

He hadn’t.


	18. Chapter 18

Mike signaled another U-turn, returning the vehicle to the west-bound lanes of the 101. 

“Sorry,” Davy said. “It’s hard to find anyway, and in the dark…”

“Don’t sweat it. I’ll try to drive slower this time.”

They’d been circling the 50-60 mile marker region of Highway 101 for nearly 45 minutes. Yates had told them that the truck was found near the 55 mile marker, and Davy knew that the path to the farmhouse was on the north side of the road. Moreover, he seemed to be sure that the truck couldn’t have been driven far from the beaten path.

“You saw how beat up I was in the hospital. That was from running through the brush, tripping over boulders… the path _has_ to be along this stretch,” Davy added, staring intently out the passenger window. 

A few hundred yard ahead of them, the taillights of a car suddenly swerved off the highway, meandering into the landscape. Mike hit the brakes, glancing at Davy, who nodded. They’d gotten lucky, Mike realized with a shiver— there were certainly no signs or obvious landmarks indicating that a road began here. If the driver was Johnny, and it could only be Johnny, he’d inadvertently jumpstarted their plan.

“Hang on,” Mike said, slowing to a crawl, clicking off their own car’s headlights, and following the vehicle’s taillights into the darkness.

In total silence, they followed the car. It was crucial, Mike felt, not near the taillights closely enough for the car’s driver to realize they had company. But even more crucial was not to let the car they were following slip too far ahead, since they could not turn on their own headlights to visualize the path.

When the taillights veered off to the right, flickering as they were filtered by an outcrop of trees, Davy touched Mike’s arm. “Stop,” he said. “We’ll be able to walk from here.”

Mike turned off the car, bathing them in complete darkness. They would wait a long time to ensure the household was sleeping before taking any more steps. 

“You okay?” he asked, thinking about Davy’s new wariness of darkened spaces.

“I’ll be okay,” Davy replied. “I know where I am.” 

In the long silence that followed, Mike couldn’t help but think about Davy running through this same stretch of rocky desert over a month earlier. Mike recalled his own conviction, the very same night, that Davy had disappeared on his own volition, and how brutally wrong it had been. Not for the first time, Davy had invented an escape route in the face of certain death, driven purely by the desire to return home to his friends. 

Tonight was Mike’s atonement for doubting Davy’s character, and he hoped he lived up to the cause.

***

By the time they had crept across the wide clearing toward the steps of the farmhouse, Mike’s eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness. Way out here, away from the lights of the towns nearby, the stars provided enough light to get around. He’d almost forgotten that feeling.

They paused at the steps to the farmhouse’s large, fragmented porch, listening. Mike could detect no movement inside, at least not on the ground floor. He nodded, and he and Davy crept across the porch and slipped inside the unlocked front door.

Despite the darkness and its blurring of details, Mike rapidly took in the ambiance of the farmhouse’s interior. Their boots crinkled softly on leaves that were strewn on the dirty floor, and once, Mike lifted his step just as he realized he was about to crunch down loudly upon a shard of a broken bottle. Davy pointed him in the direction of the staircase and they ascended carefully, using their hands to feel out where the steps were loose or missing.

Davy’s knowledge of the house stopped short at the top of the stairs. He knew which room he’d been trapped inside but not where to find the girls and Johnny. So here they paused again, listening for voices, or breathing, or scuffles that might offer a clue about who was sleeping behind which doorway.

Mike caught Davy’s eye. Behind the farthest door, they could hear snoring, deep and loud, almost certainly emanating from a drunk man. They moved to the doorway and prepared themselves to enter. 

Mike removed the sack slung over his back and withdrew a large, heavy Maglite. Davy pulled cords from the same sack, gripping them so tightly between his hands that Mike could sense his otherwise well-disguised nerves. Mike himself knew he would begin trembling if he hesitated too long— they were here. The plan was in action. This was no time to think, or question.

Mike turned the door handle so slowly that it barely made a noise and gently, carefully cracked open the door to the bedroom. Compared to the darkness of the hallway, the outline of the man sleeping in the four poster bed was nearly fluorescent, glowing under the white bedsheets. His clothing was rumpled on the floor next to the bed. Davy nudged the pile with his foot, testing its weight, until he heard a tell-tale rocking noise. He bent down, hidden in the shadow of the bed frame, and when he arose, he had a pistol in his hands. 

The pistol hadn’t exactly been part of the plan— Davy had warned Mike that Johnny carried a pistol, but Mike had considered it a hazard, not something they could use to their advantage. He stared mutely at Davy, processing this new development. Davy set the pistol on the ground near his feet and got to work with the cords.

As Mike stood guard, Davy deftly fastened the sleeping man to the bed, securing his arms first, then his legs, using knots that Mike knew he had practiced over and over and over again in the dim light of dawn after waking from countless nightmares. Mike was prepared to subdue the man if he woke, but knew from the stench of alcohol that Johnny had subdued himself thoroughly.

His movements and knot-tying had been gentle until now, but after a nod at Mike, Davy gave the cords a forceful pull, yanking Johnny’s arms fiercely above his head as he secured the final knots to the bed frame. Johnny woke then, grunting with disorientation, and Mike switched on the Maglite to shine the light directly in his eyes so he could not see his adversaries.

“What in the FUCK is going on,” Johnny’s voice boomed, seeming to shake everything in the room but Davy, who remained just out of Johnny’s sight. “Get this light out of my eyes.”

In the bright dome of light, Mike could barely make out Davy’s form standing resolute on the opposite side of the bed. The door to the room across the hall creaked open, and Mike could feel the pairs of eyes watching him, terrified into silence. He knew it was the girls, and he imagined what they were seeing: Mike’s silhouette, the blinding white glare of the Maglite trained directly on Johnny’s reddening face, and the length of electrical cords that bound him to the bed.

“GIRLS,” Johnny shouted. He seemed unafraid of his own helplessness, only angry that he was not the one in control. “GIRLS, who’s here?”

The girls said nothing. Mike could hear them breathing, shuffling, calculating the various risks they would be taking with any set of actions.

“No one’s coming to help you,” Davy said finally. “I’m here to help the girls.”

For a long moment, his words rang in the silence.

“Davy?” a small, surprised voice came from the second bedroom. 

“Molly, Patricia, Hannah,” Davy continued. “Go downstairs.”

The girls were silent, unmoving.

“They don’t listen to you,” Johnny said, his voice dripping with cruelty. “You stunted little shit. Girls, come help untie me so I can show your friend some more hospitality.”

The girls remained still.

“You’re going to be safe,” Davy told them. “But please go downstairs.”

Slowly footsteps came, the padding of bare feet into the bedroom. One of the girls moved toward Davy, her long nightgown dragging, ghostly, over the floor. “You came back,” she whispered.

“I had to,” Davy whispered back, not taking his eyes off of Johnny. 

Johnny’s breathing became erratic— he was enraged, his face taking on a hideous expression in the harsh light. “Hannah,” he growled. “UNTIE ME.”

“You can’t help us,” Hannah turned to Davy. Despite the desperation of her words, her intonation was dull. “We’re already broken. We deserve this.” 

Davy shook his head. “No,” he countered simply. “Patricia, please take Molly downstairs.”

Mike heard the other girls move now, slowly at first, then scrambling down the staircase. Davy met his eye and tilted his head, indicating that Mike should follow them, start leading them to the car. Leaving Davy with Johnny was part of the plan— but Mike felt apprehensive, unsure about how Hannah’s presence would affect the outcome.

_Go,_ Davy’s eyes said.

Mike switched off the flashlight, bathing the four of them in darkness, and crept back down the hallway slowly, letting his eyes adjust to the light and listening hard to murmured conversation in the room he’d left behind, punctuated by Johnny’s continued and increasingly furious shouting. 

He paused at the last door in the hallway, the one leading to the tiny empty bedroom that had been the site of Davy’s captivity for three long weeks. Without knowing why, he nudged the door open with his foot and stood in the doorway, gazing inside at the shredded ropes that had bound his friend’s hands and feet to gaps in the floorboards and exposed beams in the torn up walls. At the dark stain on the floor that was surely the blood, sweat, and urine Davy had left behind along with the untold cargo of his prior self— the cheerful, romantic personality that Mike felt strongly Davy would never fully reclaim. Shuddering, Mike closed the door so Davy would not have to look into the room on his way to the stairs.

Mike was making his way down the precarious staircase, pulling himself together to smile reassuringly at the two girls waiting for him below, when he heard the pistol fire once.

The girls were on the porch, huddled together and staring at Mike with mute expectation, when Davy and Hannah appeared in the farmhouse’s entrance.

“It would have been cruel to let him keep going on like this,” Davy said dully, unloading the pistol and tossing the bullets through a gap in the porch boards. 

Hannah took the pistol from him and disappeared into the darkness for several minutes, and when she reappeared, Mike and Davy led the three girls off the property, into the desert, and back to the car.


	19. Chapter 19

Davy let miles of silence accumulate as Mike drove the two of them away from the girls and toward home. At first he allowed himself to picture them, standing at the gas station payphone in the middle of nowhere, their long hair glowing under the fluorescent light. Each fingering handfuls of quarters or touching the phone numbers scrawled on their forearms with a marker, which they had copied from a scrap of paper that Davy had later shredded into fine threads and released, one by one, out of the passenger window as the dark desert flew by. 

If they chose to, they could each call a different women’s shelter and disappear anonymously into a network of charity and good intentions. They could leave the farmhouse and Johnny behind and start fresh. Patricia and Hannah seemed to have the sense, at least in the short-term, to understand that another path was possible. Molly, though, was likely to hop in the cab of the next truck that pulled in and gamble on another new life trusting a different man.

Davy let the final image of the three of them shrink into to the distance, becoming a black speck in his memory. He couldn’t control what they did with their lives now. He didn’t want to.

By the time they reached the Pad, the first signs of sunrise were visible on the horizon. They each took time to shower and put pajamas on, tiptoeing around the house in consideration for their sleeping roommates. 

Davy crawled into his bed and didn’t bother with his bedside lamp. The room was brightening on its own.

***

The next night, Peter, Micky, and Davy sat at the kitchen table playing poker. Micky scowled over his hand at the large pile of pennies that Peter had already won. 

“I only have a couple of zeroes,” Peter said glumly, pushing three queens across the table toward Micky. 

Micky threw his cards in the air and splayed out in his chair in exasperation, covering his face dramatically with one arm. Peter winked as he collected the pot, making Davy laugh hysterically.

Davy was losing to both of them, with barely enough pennies to ante another hand, but he didn’t care. For long swaths of time in the farmhouse bedroom, he had fantasized about being at the Pad, aching for the feeling of belonging to that space and the people inside it. But since he’d returned, that sensation had eluded him— he’d spent most of his time haunted by the ongoing knowledge of Johnny’s malevolence and the girls’ entrapment. Tonight, for the first time, Davy felt like he was finally home again.

“Is it over?” Mike had asked him, breaking the long silence on the long ride home. “Was this what you needed?”

“It’s over for me,” Davy had replied without hesitation. 

He knew already that Officer Yates would keep coming around to question him until another case diverted his attention. He sensed that he would continue to wake up, panicked and disoriented, for months, maybe even years. But he would no longer be consumed by the thought of Johnny continuing to hurt people, or his guilt about escaping and abandoning the girls to a life of certain abuse. 

Peter pushed a pile of pennies toward Davy to keep him in the game. “You can owe me,” he said, smiling in the unfiltered way that gave Davy an uncanny sense of belonging. “Deal us in, Micky.”

Micky rapidly recovered from his exasperated pose and amassed the cards into a pile, getting them ready to shuffle. His eyes never left the cards as he sorted them, but he grinned at the table, his ears reddening a little, as he said: “I really missed hearing Davy laugh like that.”

“Me too,” Mike agreed. They’d almost forgotten he was there, reading quietly in the corner of the room. 

The phone rang, and Mike got up to answer— he’d been waiting for Jenny to call. Davy watched him answer, blush, and carry the phone off as far away from them as the cord would allow, so they could only hear indistinct mumbling as he talked to Jenny about whatever it was they talked about.

Though Davy had never taken for granted his friends’ willingness to treat him like family, only recently had he realized how Mike had struggled with and risen to this challenge. 

I’ll repay him, Davy thought, pushing his borrowed pennies to the middle of the table as Micky dealt another hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and some thematic inspiration from Spoon's song "The Underdog" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v0KCoPMTdU
> 
> This story takes creative liberties with the Monkees' family histories, and no factual basis for these relationships is meant to be implied by this fictional work.


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